Where does my glass go?

Glass is processed in the UK.

As glass cannot be baled it is collected loose in bulker trucks at the Smugglers Way MRF and taken to the sorting facility.

At the facility contaminants (non-glass materials, such as metals, paper labels and plastics) are removed. Metals are sent on to further facilities to be recycled, whilst other materials are send to landfill.

Metal bottle caps are filtered out at the front end of the MRF process with the glass due to their small size. These caps are a contaminant and therefore are removed by magnets, etc., and sent for recycling where markets can be found. However, as they are a composite item (i.e. they have a plastic disk stuck to the inside of them), they can be difficult to separate and recycle.

Glass is then sorted into the different colours (using light refraction) and then graded by size using numerous vibrating plates that act like a sieve.

The sorted contaminant-free cullet is then send to glass smelting plants in the UK and Europe to be recycled into new bottles, windows, other glass products or used as an aggregate material.